Article on PR People and blogs

Micro Persuasion has re-posted an interesting article from a public-relations industry newsletter: It’s Time to Take Blogs Seriously — and Maybe to Develop One of Your Own.

Some highlights:

“To those people who still think that blogs are ‘loose cannons,’ I’d say that they should embrace the revolution, or become cannon fodder,” says [Shift Communications principal Todd] Defren.

Some of the rules [Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble] suggests in his manifesto should be followed by anyone who wants to run a corporate weblog:

  • Tell the truth
  • Post fast on good news or bad
  • Use a human voice
  • Have a thick skin
  • If you screw up, acknowledge it
  • If you don’t have the answers, say so
  • Never lie
  • Never hide information
  • Link to your competitors and be nice to them

“The empowering nature of the Internet will allow users to blog with or without corporate permission,” Defren says. “The blogger who is encouraged with tools, freedom, and a few simple rules-of-the-road becomes a valuable advocate for the company. The blogger whose ambitions are repudiated simply sets up shop at home and spends their free time gossiping about the company’s embarrassing hiccups.”

All sounds like good advice — and much nicer for those of us on the receiving end of their messages than the alternative “always be sincere, whether you mean it or not” line we sometimes get.

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INDUCE made easy

I’ve been meaning to blog about the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (S.2560, previously known as INDUCE), but between Ernie Miller’s great blog posts about it and now The LawMeme Reader’s Guide to Ernie Miller’s Guide to the INDUCE Act I can just be lazy and point to their stuff. Summary of the summary: the usual suspects who brought us the DMCA are trying to give the Content Cartel yet another bludgeon they can use to shut down anyone that threatens their monopoly, and if they’re lucky finally do away with the Sony v. Betamax decision that kept them from declaring the VCR illegal.

BTW, here’s the current list of co-sponsors: Orrin Hatch [UT] (primary sponsor), Lamar Alexander [TN], Barbara Boxer [CA], Hillary Rodham Clinton [NY], Tom Daschle [SD], Bill Frist [TN], Lindsey Graham [SC], Patrick Leahy [VT], Paul Sarbanes [MD], Debbie Stabenow [MI].

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CAPS-II is dead, long live CAPS-II

Tom Ridge has declared that CAPS-II is dead:

Asked Wednesday whether the program could be considered dead, Ridge jokingly gestured as if he were driving a stake through its heart and said, ”Yes.”

He cited the privacy concerns, particularly those arising from recently proposed regulations that would have required airlines to hand over information about passengers as part of a test of the program. Critics in Congress also complained that terrorists using fake identities could easily evade the system.

…but beside the fact that it was horribly susceptible to abuse, wouldn’t do anything to make our skies more secure and made even the most government-trusting citizien start looking for the jack-booted thugs, what wasn’t to like?

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Another cross-industry DRM effort

From PRNewswire:

LOS ANGELES, July 14 (PRNewswire) — IBM, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Panasonic (Matsushita Electric), Sony, Toshiba, The Walt Disney Company, and Warner Bros. Studios today announced the formation of Advanced Access Content System License Administrator (AACS LA), a cross-industry effort that develops, promotes and licenses technology designed to enhance digital entertainment experiences. This technology will facilitate the ability to enjoy exciting, new, flexible entertainment experiences for consumers in stand-alone, networked home and portable devices.

By “enhance digital entertainment experiences,” of course, they mean “have enough DRM that we’re willing to release our content at all, preferably without alienating all our legitimate customers.” Not clear how they intend to achieve this DRM equivalent of the Philosopher’s Stone, but they’ve got a lot of heavy-hitters involved…

More details are promised in coming days at http://www.aacsla.com/.

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How to Make a Guerrilla Documentary

The New York Times Magazine’s How to Make a Guerrilla Documentary article about the production of Outfoxed has everything you could ask for in a story about Internet-era guerrilla media: footage gathered by recording Fox News 24/7 for six months straight, volunteer watchdogs identifying and categorizing clips via email, simultaneous editing by five different editors coordinated over a secure Web site, even the risk of being sued for Copyright infringement as a way of silencing the work. Throw in Web distribution, coast-to-coast kick-off house parties organized by MoveOn.org, and commentary clips available for download over BitTorrent and what do you get? A hard-hitting political documentary, produced in only four and a half months for only $300,000.

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Our oh-so-on-top-of-things president

What does it say about our president that, the day before the Senate votes on an historic amendment to the US Constitution that, after being pushed through as a vital campaign wedge issue without allowing even debate in committee, the president’s email system doesn’t even list the issue as an acceptable subject for discussion in his menu of valid email subjects for dissenting views?

I submitted my letter under “Hate Crimes.” That seems the most appropriate given the nature of the bill.

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Taking a stand against equality in our name

Dear President Bush, Senator Feinstein, Senator Boxer, and Representative Eshoo:

We are a young nation, full of idealism and zeal and well-deserved pride. As is always true of the young, we have made many mistakes in our brief 228 years. In the end we must all reflect on the moments we were at our worst with the clarity of hindsight, and like a growing boy we pray we will be judged by future generations not by our missteps, but by how much we learned from them.

Our Constitution is our record of that growth. The nation our fathers brought forth in 1787 was a remarkable experiment, conceived in the radical notion that all men are created equal. But that nation still denied women and Negroes the vote, enshrined slavery as an inalienable right, and accepted a nation that, while lacking an aristocracy, still promoted a system strongly divided by class. If the morality of such institutions seems clear and obvious today, it is only because previous generations struggled to clear the fog of ignorance and prejudice that passed for common wisdom in their own time. To read the amendments to our Constitution is to read the record of how we struggle to face our human weaknesses and, on seeing them for what they are, how we then have the courage to put things right.

You, our representatives, are now debating whether by banning gay marriage our generation should take a stand to reverse this slow and steady march towards tolerance, respect, and equal protection under the law for all men and women. A decision to change course after so many years should not be made lightly, nor for political gain. Regardless of the outcome of individual votes, our future children and grandchildren will study this moment in school just as today’s children study our progress from the dark days of slavery to emancipation, integration of the Army and the Civil Rights Act. I trust you will give them every reason to be proud.

Sincerely,

Dr. Bradley Rhodes
275 Hawthorne Ave. #106
Palo Alto, CA 94301

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Eat your children

HP’s Multi-user 411 Desktop computer is a cute idea: one Linux box with four monitors and four keyboards, sold to cash-strapped schools. It’s a perfect match really — the typical school computer lab is lots of seats close together, with low CPU needs but a tight budget. Currently they’re only selling them in South Africa, though there’s certainly interest elsewhere.

The strange part is all the nay-saying industry analysts in the Reuters article, with quotes like “As interest in the machine grows, the limited supply has turned a well-intentioned product into a source of confusion among educators and a point of debate among industry analysts, who question whether a major computer maker has an interest in bringing a low-cost alternative to a wider mass market.” Out here in Silicon Valley, that’s the kind of quote we like to put on the gravestones of large companies who refuse to eat their young.

The hardware is nothing special — it’s just a regular Intel box running Mandrake, with 4 NVIDIA Qdro4 100NVS 64MB DH cards (one AGP, three PCI), one PS/2 keyboard and three US keyboards, one audio card and three Telex P-500 USB Digital Audio Converters. Sounds like they’ve done a little bit of software coding to make it all smooth and there’s clearly value in buying from a brand-name company like HP, but if they decide it’s too risky I bet someone else could be producing near-identical machines within a week. Heck, make it a school project and kill two birds with one stone!

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